The petitioners have questioned the narco analysis and other tests such as polygraph and brain mapping on Fr. Patrick Xavier.

Bangalore:

The family of Fr. Father Patrick Xavier, a suspect in the murder of a seminary rector in Bangalore, has sought a CBI probe into the investigation into the case.

The Karnataka High Court on Friday ordered issue of notice to the State government in this regard.

Justice A.S. Bopanna passed the order on a petition filed by Maria Das, Susainathan, Sister Francina, and Bernard Raju, who are respectively brothers, sister and father of Fr. Father Patrick Xavier.

The priest is a complainant as well as accused in the murder of Fr. K.J. Thomas (62), rector of the St. Peter’s Pontifical Seminary in Bangalore.

The court also permitted Fr. Xavier to be part of the petitions filed by his family.

The petitioners have questioned the narcoanalysis and other tests such as polygraph and brain mapping on Fr. Xavier saying they were conducted in the absence of his voluntary consent as per Supreme Court guidelines.

“The consent affidavits produced before the magistrate was not voluntary. These are drawn and obtained by the Investigating Officer under stressed emotional condition,” the petition said.

Fr. Thomas was found bludgeoned to death in the coffee room in the seminary on the night of April 1 when all the 200 or so students were away on vacation.

It was Fr. Xavier, the procurator at the seminary, who was sleeping in the room next to the rector’s, who called the police.

The newly elected head of the bishops’ conference has urged the clergy and the Catholic faithful not to solicit funds from politicians.

In a pastoral statement released yesterday, Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan said soliciting money from politicians contributes to the “culture of corruption” in the country.

He said Church people contribute to corruption “by grabbing a piece of the pie through our solicitations from government officials – from candles to basketball uniforms to bags of cement to government bulldozers.”

“Every time we ask our politicians for monetary help, we tempt them to dig into the ‘pork barrel’ coffers or jueteng [illegal numbers racket] chests to accommodate our request,” the prelate said.

Pork barrel is a phrase that is frequently used in Philippine politics. Legislators are allocated large sums of the annual national budget – 200 million pesos for each senator and 70 million for each representative – in a program called the Priority Development Assistance Fund, or more commonly the ‘pork barrel.’

In his statement, Villegas criticized politicians for using the pork barrel to enrich themselves or grab credit for projects they did not initiate.

“It is not uncommon to refer to projects from the pork barrel fund as ‘projects of Congressman X,’ giving the impression that this is personal money and not public funds,” Villegas said.

“Public governance is stewardship,” he added. “But the pork barrel has made public governance a system of patronage.”

Villegas said fund raising projects of Church groups should be transparent, adding that the clergy and Church leaders should “prepare our accounting reports” to ensure that the principle of accountability is observed.

He issued the statement amid reports that six senators and at least 28 members of the House of Representatives are involved in a US$230 million pork-barrel scam.

Source: UCAN News

English: Street map of Manila, Philippines with points of interest indicated. This is an SVG version of Media:Ph map manila large.png. Updated for 2006. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Having learned with sadness of the death of Cardinal Simon Ignatius Pimenta, Archbishop Emeritus of Bombay, I offer heartfelt condolences to you and to all the clergy, religious and lay faithful of the Archdiocese. Recalling with gratitude Cardinal Pimenta’s long years of devoted service to the catholic community there and his many years of faithful assistance to the successor of Peter as a member of the College of Cardinals, I join you in praying that God our Merciful Father will grant him the reward of his labours and welcome his noble soul into the joy and peace of the Heavenly Kingdom. To Cardinal Pimenta’s relatives and all assembled for the Solemn Requiem Mass, I cordially impart my Apostolic Blessing as a pledge of consolation and strength in the Lord.

The word has gone out through the guides and others that one needs to dress modestly when entering the Basilica, said the rector.

Panaji: The Basilica of Bom Jesus in Old Goa is planning to withdraw volunteers posted outside the historic church to offer a shawl to the ‘inappropriately’ clad. Since they were first posted two years ago, volunteers seem to have achieved the desired result and will now be withdrawn shortly, according to the Basilica’s guardians. “Volunteers do not need to stand there anymore as a rule every day. The word has gone out through the guides and others that one needs to dress modestly when entering the Basilica,” said Fr. Savio Baretto, rector of the Basilica. “The tourists know about the shawls. The needed awareness has been created and tourists now prefer to come modestly dressed to avoid being given a shawl later. The volunteers will be withdrawn soon as the necessary purpose has mostly been achieved,” said the priest. He said when officials of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) raised fears that posting of the volunteers may affect the inflow of tourists, Basilica officials had made it clear that the arrangement was only a temporary measure. “We have orally conveyed to ASI as well that it is not a permanent feature. I am happy now that we do not get the kind of skimpily-dressed tourists, mostly foreigners, as before,” said the Basilica rector. “I am not comfortable with the giving of shawls myself. But then no other church gets people dressed like that,” he added. He admitted that the volunteers posted were often from parishes in villages of Goa and what they had to say was often lost-in-translation when handing out a shawl to a foreign tourist. The move of posting the volunteers had received wide appreciation from Goans from across the religious spectrum and the Basilica had been heaped with such mails in 2011, the Basilica rector added. “It wasn’t a code as such, as everyone called it. The main aim behind handing out the shawls was to create awareness that one needs to come appropriately dressed as we have the blessed sacrament preserved in the church and it is the presence of God for us, which needs to be respected,” he said. The church officials said the decision was not implemented overnight, as it might seem to many, but the church had been considering ways of curbing skimpily-dressed visitors from entering the sacred home of God for five years before the volunteers were posted. Source: times of india